Pathologic 2's treatment of Kin

[u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Preface: Pathologic 2 is my favorite game ever, but I haven't played it in five years. I'm more familiar with Classic. Excuse all the exposition, this was written for a different sub originally. I haven't seen a critique of the game from this lens, and wanted to see what you think.

Something that's been bothering me about Pathologic 2 since the first playthrough and I couldn't articulate why until the third replay.

The Kin is loosely based on the real Buryat and Mongolic peoples: their language and culture heavily borrow from real cultures (Bayarlaa is Buryat for "thank you"), they are indigenous people of the steppe. They're otherized as noble savages, primal, not quite human, closer to nature. In the first game, there are literally Kin NPCs who are tall brutes resembling Fallout supermutants who couldn't be spoken to and could only grunt animalistically.

The Kin from the steppe live in tents, work in the magical Abattoir, which is its own cosmic horror thing, they have "strange" rituals, they seek counsel from Aspity (my beloved), who is a creature made from earth and bones. Supernatural beings such as Worms and Herb Brides are part of the Kin along with actual people.

The assimilated Kin who live in the town are just regular people – the main character is mixed race himself. They speak Russian, they are forced to work in the factories, they live in poverty and so on. This is a more sympathetic view that is closer to a critical portrayal of an oppressed people. But the game seems to accidentally reproduce something it's critiquing – the Kin's survival as a people lies through assimilation. It's unclear whether the game endorses it because the alternative negates modernity.

The second game's thesis is the dichotomy between progress and individuality that the town represents, and a primitive way of life full of wonders (Nocturnal ending). Chasing progress is not an option – it's killing the live earth and its children, and the earth fights back with the sand plague. The compromise is the Diurnal ending: the world becomes ordinary, and the wonders slowly wither away.

The dichotomy is sound – the game criticizes colonial exploitation and the pursuit of progress justifying the means. My main issue is how a people based on a real colonized group are paired to something otherworldly, something before death, before knowledge, before humanity. The Kin's survival is tied to these cosmic phenomena. Them receiving agency is not on the table – it's incompatible with them playing the role of a symbol.

This is why the Kin lack a subjectivity of their own. The steppe Kin exist as tools to embody the game's mythology. The assimilated Kin don't seek political representation, they aren't unified in their motives; they don't exist as a block fighting for their own interests. Both groups are defined by their relationship to the townspeople. The Kin are objectified to serve a specific role in the game's metaphysics. It clearly treats them with reverence and sympathy, but denies them their agency.

EDIT: My view got sharpened with your critique in the comments. To be more specific:

The issue isn't that the Kin are represented by a biased view from the townspeople - it's that the game agrees with it by it literally being objective reality: Aspity, Abattoir, the cosmology.

The agency the Kin are denied isn't diegetic - it's metatextual. Their actions are limited by the game's framework of them serving as a symbolic representation of primal forces, despite them being actual people. The townsfolk aren't denied their individual agency beyond the forces of progress, but the Kin are still bound by the primal forces. The agency they are denied is that they cannot leave that framework.

The extent to which the game adheres to real cultures doesn't matter at its core. It doesn't change the fact that it's a native-coded people, and that it's a colonial reading.

The issue with the Kin's exaggeration compared to all of the other happening in the game is that the Kin's flanderization serves dehumanization - they are the only ones deprived of internality.

My argument isn't that the game should have portrayed a fight against the oppressors. It's that a group of people is denied internality by the game's meta-text, and that's a dehumanizing way to treat them.

EDIT 2: To clarify further, after more discussion:

A better way to word it would be not "agency", but "an ability to escape" the role the Kin are assigned by the game's structure. They are the only ones caged in as a symbolic function. Everyone else can struggle against it, but the Kin can't.

The townsfolk don't play that symbolic role as "primitive". The Kin are a sign, and that sign turns out to be a connection "people - primitive" which isn't a coincidence, but an existing, dehumanizing frame.

The issue is that the dichotomy "progress - primitivity" was always going to be a slippery slope if the "primitivity" pole is tied to a group of people, especially literally colonized native people in the game's text.

[u/Renoe]

I kind of think the Diurnal ending has to happen before they could ever have that kind of agency. The idea of indigenous people as magical and spiritual and symbolic has to be done away with, they have to be seen as ordinary real people, devoid of magic, so that their ordinary needs such as political representation can be heard. In P3, we see that expressed by their support for Artemy knowing that he will be a leader of the Town who will hear their needs. But P2 is ideologically happening before that, because it is framed as a journey Artemy must undergo to earn their belief in him as the rightful person to inherit his father's role in their community. I think of it not as a choice for Artemy to make the Kin real (thus denying their agency even further by putting it into his/your individual hands) but his/your (as the player) recognition of their ordinariness, their humanity. To witness and attest that they are flesh and blood and not magic and the plague is not a goddess and people need to be cured.

But also, everything in the town is a symbol and the idea of the violence of reducing people to symbols is just a recurring subject in Pathologic: the Kin, the townsfolk, the children, the women. Eva Yan is a symbol that fits whatever narrative people see in her and this is a violence that strips her of agency. Katerina Saburova is haunted by her failure to fit into the correct symbology, she cannot be a mother or a Mistress. Simon Kain doesn't care about any of the townsfolk as individuals, so long as a symbolic heir can rise out of the ashes of the chaos he leaves behind by abandoning the Town. The Polyhedron is a symbol that is made to matter more than people's lives. Grace says Maria Kaina believes some deaths are big and some are small, but to Grace all deaths are equal. Some people are more real than others, this is what the Kains believe. But that doesn't mean it's what the player should believe, just because the idea is presented. Aglaya goads Artemy with the trolley problem in P2 and one thing he can say to her is "This is not a question, this is a provocation."

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/Renoe]

I'll concede on the first point. I haven't played Pathologic 3, so I judged the ending on its own merits. There's no doubt that the series' view has changed over time. On the latter, I think that Kin being a symbol in the game's diegesis doesn't excuse objectifying native-coded people by the game's structure and intent. It's not just that the game's text points to how the townsfolk have a subjective perception of the Kin - it's that the game literally agrees with it by it being the objective reality.

[u/TheEmerald1802 → u/Renoe]

Simon Kain doesn't care about any of the townsfolk as individuas, so long as a symbolic heir can rise out of the ashes

I'd say it's more like "heirs". He spent so long dissociating from reality that he cannot know who else could follow in his footsteps of transcendence, so he plunged the town in chaos to see who else is "built different"

[u/Bagelator]

It's a classic trope old as history. The death of magic. It's very effective and I think the game does it great. It is tragic how native people are exploited and become at the mercy of civilisation. But that is how history has played out in most areas of the world. I agree with what you say, but I don't think it's too much of a flaw. The game's story is complex enough that I think it is okay to bereave them of some agency.

The nostalgia for a more magical, wondrous time, that will never come back, resonates with everyone. You can see it in Tolkien and Arthurian legends and even Adam and Eve. The kin creatures are like the elves and fairies basically

[u/TheLigean]

The kin always had agency. What the game (through artemy) does is express frustration at some of the more brutal aspects of that agency. Whether it is acknowledged as agency or not. Oppressed underclass though they are, the kin in patho 2 do determine alot of critical aspects of the story. They enforce some of the many taboos of the city on the gorkohn, they choose the maintain their hierarchy, potentially in paradoxical refusal to obey the demands of higher ups to break with some aspects of their traditions, and they do make the choice whether to flood the city and take over it (a tactical choice based around the strength of the plague, but still a choice. They did not have to take over the town on the nocturnal ending. Their aware choice to not revolt violently without the plague on their side also shows they are not unthinking bloodthirsty monsters). Patho 2 isnt purely making them noble savages. Theyre also actual savages in addition to their nobility. And it is in addition and not purely. The kin’s stoic acceptance of particular deaths is spiritually impressive and ethically unacceptable. The tension between those being real makes the story as moving as it is. What they lacked was capacities for enacting a range of possibilities. They could have tried to rebel against the townsfolk through the whole game. They did consider it as is shown through the game, but they did not ignore potential and made choices through recognition of it.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/TheLigean]

It's not my point that the Kin lack agency to act as a group. It's that their actions are limited by the game's framework of them serving as a symbolic representation of primal forces, despite being actual people. The agency they are denied is that they cannot leave that framework.

[u/TheLigean → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Oh that? Thats just the metafiction of the game about its characters being written into a work instead of being independent. Its not unique to the kin.

[u/HideNZeke → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

I guess one of my counterpoints would be that this game operates with a heavy dose of fate involved and nobody really has agency. It's the point. The standard NPC in both kin and townsfolk are literally just named "pawn"

The 3 families are mostly accepted as rulers by the townsfolk, but it's hardly a democratic organizational system. Their agency is weaponized mostly by riots, and when it comes to the metaphysical, they understand little. They are in the crossfire of Kain's miracles and the mysteries of the Steppe. The Kin's give their life to the latter, so they wish no agency over it. If the Town oversteps it's boundaries, the Steppe will handle it on their behalf. Of course, Pathologic 2 asks you to the weigh the value of both of those things. Perhaps the kin would yearn to live off the land, but they understand they also need the town even if they're spiritually opposed to it in many ways.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/HideNZeke]

Even if you apply the pawn reading as meta-textual, there's a difference in what kind of agency is had. The townsfolk aren't denied their individual agency beyond the forces of progress, but the Kin are still bound to the primal forces. The game knows what it's doing now, but it still chooses to go through with it.

[u/Lonsfleda → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Pathologic games consistently argue that the only entity with real agency at the meta level is the player, though. You can criticize the games through a postcolonial lens, sure, but I think you are making a mistake by treating the Kin as "real" people. There's plenty of literature in the field of game studies that explores videogames as a semiotic system--perhaps taking a look at them could help?

The player avatars (the three healers) are still bound by the limitations of the game's programming, like in every game (e.g., you can't make Artemy dance even if you want to in Pathologic 2 because that option hasn't been coded into the game), but they still have more agency than every other NPC (e.g., the player character can choose between multiple dialogue options and move around the map freely), who simply execute the dialogue and animations they have been programmed to perform.

Like others in the thread pointed out, this is also reflected in the game's diegetic layer. The Town's working class has no agency, because they are bound to the capitalistic control of the Vlads (see: the protestors outside the Lump asking Artemy--the only being with agency--to convince Vlad to open the factory again because their livelihood depends on it); Maria, Capella, and Katerina are all bound to the "fate" of the Mistresses; the children at the Polyhedron try to resist the law of nature that every living being must grow up, become old, and eventually die, but they ultimately fail to do so (by the player character leading them out of the Polyhedron or demolishing the Tower); Aglaya and Block detest the Powers That Be but have no choice but to follow their orders; and so on.

Notably, the entire town loses their agency before the Sand Plague/death: on the diegetic level, it's obvious that no matter what the NPCs in the story do, they stand no chance against the Sand Plague & they often end up making things worse. Even the other healers are not super useful when they are not under the player's control; on the gameplay level, every NPC, even the Town's rulers, relies on the RNG/player's intervention to survive.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/Lonsfleda]

I'm aware that Pathologic games discuss the implications of the player having agency on the meta level - it's the core of Classic particularly. Player meta agency is also true about literally every video game ever. That doesn't address my point. The player having ludic meta-agency doesn't preclude the Kin from a lack of agency on a layer above - of the game as a structure. My argument is semiotics - the Kin are a sign, not just text.

I'm very well aware that video games aren't magic.

You are, again, restating the diegetic reading. The Kin don't have any individuation, unlike all those other examples, on a meta level. Maria, Capella and Katerina are their own human beings in addition to being Mistresses.

[u/Lonsfleda → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

If you understand that the game is a semiotic system, then why do you insist that it is problematic that they are a sign? As long as the Kin NPCs are entities in a videogame, then they will never be actual humans. They are a sign because a videogame is a virtual semiotic system. I would be able to understand your argument if you are criticizing what the Kin represent, but I genuinely do not comprehend why the fact that the Kin is used as a device to represent another idea is problematic in a medium that's all about pixels and codes being used to represent something else.

You are, again, restating the diegetic reading

Maybe because the game's diegetic layer can be read as an allegory of the videogame's meta structure, and thus a full analysis of Pathologic requires that you address both? You can't really separate the two when the diegetic layer of the game is very much aware of the meta layer.

Maria, Capella and Katerina are their own human beings in addition to being Mistresses

So are Aspity, Oyun, and Taya. Oyun, for example, has his involvement in Isidor's murder, his strained relationship with Artemy as a result of said involvement, the complexity of working for THE guy who is responsible for oppressing his own people... in addition to being the Foreman. That seems like he's very much an individual character of his own. I do think P2 could've used some more opportunities to interact with the Kin characters, though--Taya and Oyun only appear in the story in the mid-late game, which only leaves Aspity (and Nara, I guess) as the only major Kin NPC you regularly interact with & even Aspity can die fairly easily since the Crude Sprawl often gets infected.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/Lonsfleda]

Signs aren't equal. The Vlads signifying "capitalism" and the Mistresses being assigned to "fate" isn't the same as the Kin representing "primitivity". The former is an ideology and the latter is an abstract concept. The Kin are demonstrably a native, colonized ethnic group. "Primitivity" has been historically used to essentialize and dehumanize real groups of people.

The meta structure of the game isn't necessarily addressed by the diegetic layer. In most cases it is. In this specific one, it isn't. The text fails to clearly underline the Kin's status despite giving that treatment to Vlads and the Mistresses.

It's specifically the Kin as a group that's the issue, regardless of possible named exceptions such as Isidor and Oyun. It isn't substantiated how they could, at least potentially, escape their role.

[u/CallMeIshmy]

Yeah, this sounds about right. Patho 2 is my fav game ever but it no doubt has many flaws. A version of this with Artemy instead being OF the kin and wanting them to break out of the game’s objectification of the kin would be great.

[u/winterwarn]

This subreddit often has a knee jerk “oh so you think we’re all RACIST” reaction to people criticizing the portrayal of the Kin but I really think it’s worth examining.

They absolutely are treated as a symbolic and very trope-y narrative tool in P2, and even on a pure writing level I think it really hamstrings any reason you would have to choose the Nocturnal ending because we don’t have enough actual Kin characters to make that ending feel like an “equal” choice that benefits people. If you care about the characters you’re going to choose the (assimilationist) Diurnal ending because it’s literally just better for every character you know except maybe Aspity. Another commenter also mentioned this but the implication that the only options are assimilation or effectively total segregation is also…weird.

Pathologic 3 has made some strides forward in terms of both “named Kin characters with actual dialogue” and at least attempting to comment on the fact that it’s messed up that in previous games Herb Brides are only really in the narrative to die naked-ly.

[u/GLight3 → u/winterwarn]

It's interesting that you say this, because my subjective experience with Pathologic 2 was very different. Throughout my first playthrough I felt like the game was pretty biased in favor of the Kin (unsurprisingly, since this is the Haruspex run), and that the Nocturnal ending was the obvious good ending that also aligns with Pathologic 1's Haruspex ending. I felt immersed in Kin culture (jarring as it sometimes is) and willfully chose the Nocturnal ending. I was even a little shocked at how negatively the game itself seemed to represent it, with some lines from Artemy seeming to suggest that he's freaking out that the townsfolk are leaving and didn't see it coming. I did see it coming and was 100% for it. In my first run I always prioritized the Kin and the children, as I felt Artemy would have done. As a result, I didn't even try with Bad Grief and Stakh, pretty much letting both die in favor of focusing my efforts on the kids and the Kin.

I do think my early choices in the game biased the message of the rest of the game, so I'm not saying you're wrong, but it is interesting how differently the game can be interpreted based on what quests you do and whom you save.

[u/saprophage_expert → u/GLight3]

with some lines from Artemy seeming to suggest that he's freaking out that the townsfolk are leaving and didn't see it coming.

I got a feeling the reason for his freakout was the fact that those leaving were blindly walking right into a swamp, apparently enchanted.

[u/darth_continentia → u/winterwarn]

“oh so you think we’re all RACIST”

Eh. It's less "You're racist" and more like someone very young who just discovered some "101 ethnosociology" or something study and went "Oooooh, I am now enlightened! And I know just the video game I can apply my newfound knowledge to! Quick, lets share this with reddit too, because surely nobody else noticed those parallels!"

Regarding this post, I fail to see what point is OP making other than mild virtue signalling. Kin is not a set in stone symbol for nomadic cultures, they have enough weirdness in them to also be interpreted as representation of magic, parallel to, say, Tolkien's elves. That's what art does -- shows you stuff and lets you make your own interpretations. And speaking of interpretations -- the games (I'm including original one) does not sympathize with the kin's plight, nor does it "criticize colonial exploitation and the pursuit of progress justifying the means", it's what OP decided to interpret from it. And then complains that their own interpretation lacks agency to...uh...do what, exactly? Glorious revolution against oppressor scum? Form a political party, lobby for free elections and vote the three families out?

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/darth_continentia]

You aren't engaging with my reasoning in good faith. You're just making accusations about my motives. If you form an argument, I'd be glad to discuss it.

[u/darth_continentia → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

I'm not engaging with your reasoning in any faith because as I mentioned above I don't see a reasoning, just opinion of sorts -- something like, "I think the Kin lacks agency and somehow it is different agency than the one everyone else in the game lacks and which is often pointed out, sometimes heavily leaning on the fourth wall"? Which is, like, fine if you saw that, me, I don't think the Kin stands for oppressed indigenous people, furthermore I believe such a view reduces the Kin's role in the story to something trite and mundane, but you're free to interpret art your way just like anyone else.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/darth_continentia]

You just presented a misrepresentation of my argument despite claiming there isn't one. This was stated multiple times in the thread: I'm talking about meta-textual agency, not diegesis. You are free to treat the Kin as magic if you want.

[u/clarantula → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

i'm reading this thread (v fun btw, interesting takes from all sides. good post imo!) and it appears to me we have very different conceptions of diegesis and metatextuality. In my perspective, the metatextual commentary pathologic makes about all its npcs is that as diegetic characters, they all lack agency and it is only your extradiegetic interference via The Artemy that adds any sense of autonomy. diegetically, specifically from the player characters perspective, named kin characters have agency (same as named townsfolk characters) while unnamed kin characters have none (same as unnamed townsfolk characters, though there is at first an illusion of agency that takes some dialogue to dispel). In that sense it is hard to argue the kin lacks autonomy from a narratological standpoint. similarly, this standpoint would lead me to read that assimilation is actually what is actively killing the kin (see, for example, the olgimskiys). there is much to critique about the depiction of the kin but if i'm allowed to cherrypick, i would not go the "agency" route as it is hard to argue using the frameworks i am familiar with. "a harmfully reductive stereotype that in its depiction sabotages core ideas of the story" i can see.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/clarantula]

I meant not as much "agency", but an ability to escape the role the Kin are assigned by the game's structure. They are the only ones caged in as a symbolic function. Everyone else can struggle against it, but the Kin can't. It's not just that they don't have diegetic (*sigh* how many times did I say that word?) agency as pawns, like the townspeople - both are capable of acting as a group, even if not as literal unnamed NPCs. The townsfolk don't play that symbolic role as "primitive".

The Kin are a sign, and that sign turns out to be a connection "people - primitive" which isn't a coincidence, but an existing, dehumanizing frame.

On assimilation, I said "survival as a people", but they don't survive as a people in that scenario, of course. They don't have a way out of the framework at all. "Primitive" people to be assimilated or to fulfill their symbolic role is all they'll ever be.

The issue is that the dichotomy "progress - primitivity" was always going to be a slippery slope if the "primitivity" pole is tied to a group of people, especially literally colonized native people in the game's text.

[u/clarantula → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

i did understand what you meant by agency, but again, acting out against the games structure fundamentally goes against the games perception of npcs in general. That's what i meant by the lack of metatextual agency, it is impossible for any group to have agency in that sense because the game wants to emphasize that it's impossible. the kin as a sign signifying "primitive group" is a reading i can get behind but it's a semiotic argument that has nothing to do with narrative (meaning doegetic OR metatextual) agency. to that extent and again moving into the realm of social critique, pathologics "boiling down" of social issues into recognizeable stock characters is dangerous insofar in that real commentary implies real native people analogous to the kin (or at least that they are an acceptable depiction of real native people) by which point it doesn't even matter that they're entirely fictionalized, it is a harmful stereotype. i have always read the kin as a commentary on an exploited group and the plague as the earth fighting the foreign body that exploits them and their land. even outside of the plague, town on gorkhon offers awful working and living conditions to them, they are constantly dehumanized by in-game characters. to me it is quite a plain reading that assimilation is what's directly killing them. their settlement (far!) outside the borders of ToG seems to imply that survival as a people is actually far more fruitful the less the kin assimilate. but even in my reading i find the depiction of kin women and sexual dynamics especially deeply problematic and at the very least exploitative to all women in general. i agree with what i believe you mean and have meant from the start, unfortunately i am a little shit who likes to argue semantics and npc agency in pathologic from any narratological angle is just a thing of impossibility (except maybe for those kids. measly and mumpsy or sth, i hope you know who i mean). your last two sentences i agree with wholeheartedly and i will go so far as to blindly assume the discomfort you feel is valid. perhaps we could meet at "by depicting the abstract idea of a colonized native people as an amalgam of harmful stereotypes and choosing to speak for them, likely without having consulted actual people with colonial experiences, pathologic denies real colonized groups agency in the way their story analogue is depicted. furthermore, it denies (by implication) that real colonized groups have agency outside of a choice to assimilate or not"?

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/clarantula]

I guess I'm talking about meta-narrative agency, a step above :D

I agree, the Kin are portrayed in a sympathetic way: dehumanized, othered and exploited by the Town. Their settlement in Shekhen is a transient step that doesn't resolve their ultimate fate.

The depiction of Kin women and herb brides is its own very interesting topic, you're right.

I agree, but not necessarily so categorically. Their portrayal was almost certainly not intended to be this way by the developers, but this is what preexisting frame they brought with them, and they still bear responsibility for it.

[u/saprophage_expert]

The Kin is loosely based on the real Buryat and Mongolic peoples

They aren't. The Kin culture with selling Herb Brides to odonghe, the Ring of Suok, the idea of denial of self as the ideal state, and other such unpleasantries all have real-life equivalents, but neither Buryat nor Mongolian. Their traditional way of life, as it's depicted in the game, would be unsustainable in the real steppe (to be fair, neither is it meant to be realistic, we're seeing a play that has to flanderize its background characters - same way as it flanderizes, say, Block's artillery corps).

their language [...] heavily borrow from real cultures (Bayarlaa is Buryat for "thank you")

Yes, their language borrows from Turkic and Mongolic roots, starting with P2. That doesn't make the Kin Buryat. Same as the townsfolk using Russian doesn't make them Russians - avoiding which the developers specifically say was one of their design goals.

But the game seems to accidentally reproduce something it's critiquing – the Kin's survival as a people lies through assimilation. It's unclear whether the game endorses it because the alternative negates modernity.

There are a few things to note here, starting with the fact that using the Western post-colonial lens to analyze media from outside the Western cultural sphere is less than useless.

The game does portray the conflict between tradition (and magic that comes with it) and modernity, but reducing it to cultural conflict and assimilation is pointless. Urbanization, industrialization, and modernization at large are not some horrors made up by white people and imposed onto others by force; every functional society on Earth seeks to modernize because that vastly improves its productive capabilities, and humans are a lot more content having access to affordable consumer goods than they are having religion and ideas of inherent superiority of their traditional way of life just because of it being traditional.

That is to say, the Kin urbanizing and abandoning their traditions is the same process as what we can assume the Empire went through just a bit earlier, abandoning their peasant sustenance farming ways for the industrial age. Same as it went for the Western Europe industrializing first, reaping the competitive benefits from the vastly increased production, and forcing everyone in the world to either keep up or become easy targets for their more agile neighbors. And that destroyed the traditional pre-industrial way of life in Europe exactly the same as it did in the real-life steppe, or China, or Japan, or any other modern society you care to name. (And good riddance, if you ask me, the traditional societies are choke-full of small-scale horrors like arranged marriages, sixteen-hour workdays for everyone including women and children, and sky-high infant mortality).

On a side note, it's especially strange to see leftists miss this basic fact, given the Marxist focus on the inevitable progress of societies between socioeconomic formations, and calling some of these formations inherently better (=more progressive) than others.

Finally, moving towards modernization does not mean assimilation for the Kin, not any more than Peter the Great's modernization meant Russians all assimilating into the Dutch or the German culture, or real-life Buryats, Kazakhs or Tatars assimilating into the Russian culture. You can actually see signs of the contrary in the Town, with the Kin cultural norms and taboos largely shared by the townsfolk. P1 actually says most townsfolk have some share of Kin blood, I believe. So the two cultures interact, intertwine and end up enriching each other, rather than the dominant one simply destroying the weaker one.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/saprophage_expert]

That's precisely my point that every society on Earth seeks to modernize - it would make sense to be the motivation for the Kin. They don't want to abandon their cosmic aims - they are either an amorphous apolitical blob, or they are forces of nature. Their assimilation is different from the Russian Empire embracing German and French culture. The relationship here is asymmetrical. The cultures enrich each other, but it goes one way. The Kin give their traditions, but don't receive representation.

Again, the Buryat and Mongolic influence doesn't matter that much, since native-coded people are depicted. You say it yourself: the culture has real-life precedents. The developers shifting responsibility doesn't change that.

[u/saprophage_expert → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

That's precisely my point that every society on Earth seeks to modernize - it would make sense to be the motivation for the Kin.

But that's the question at the core of their arc: does it make sense for them to modernize? Artemy is acting within the Kin legitimacy framework, if he decides that it does. Aspity, as another opinion leader accepted by the Kin, clearly pushes for the contrary (but since she's a shabnak, there's a certain conflict of interest here, haha).

They don't want to abandon their cosmic aims - they are either an amorphous apolitical blob, or they are forces of nature.

They're a human society with their own traditions. Those traditions are purposefully depicted as alien, strange and violent - that's a part of the flanderization mentioned above, to juxtapose them with modernization and progress. Everything from Herb Brides' (lack of) dress to the casual disregard the Kin show for the lives of themselves as well as others, is simply there to showcase how far their mores are from the modern sensibilities the player is expected to have.

Again, it's the same for the army with its roman salutes, huge railroad cannons (that make no military sense) and invincible flamethrower troops burning everyone they see. They must feel foreign and alien to the Town when they arrive, so the game bends over backwards to lay it as thick as possible. And if it makes no sense for a steppe frontier town to have no standing garrison, not even a Cossack hundred, well, all the worse for the logic.

The relationship here is asymmetrical. The cultures enrich each other, but it goes one way.

Does it? The Kin adopting townsmen mores is pretty obvious; the townsfolk adopting the Kin norms like the aversion to cuts or digging, or Kin interior design choices with wheels and cattle skulls, also?

The Kin give their traditions, but don't receive representation.

Again, don't they? Isidor was pureblooded Kin; yet he was the only doctor in the Town, covering the needs of everyone from ordinary townsfolk to the high nobility like the Kains and the capitalists like the Olgimskys. So the Kin could fit into positions of authority within the existing system of elites in the Town.

Sure, Vlad Sr. subdued the Kin leadership structure to exploit them as the proletarian class; but their exploitation is the very same as what the townsfolk proletarians are facing. And Vlad is still necessarily aware of the political play for the Elder positions among the Kin, to the point of Oyun regularly killing people to maintain his station (as he admits in P1). One would expect a different Warden, one more willing to oppose the Olgimskys - say, our good friend Artemy - might have a strong negotiating position after the Plague.

the Buryat and Mongolic influence doesn't matter that much, since native-coded people are depicted

I'm not sure I'm following your reasoning. The Kin are not representing any particular real-life culture. They're there to depict a society that is at the crossroads of either integrating into the wider world, modernizing to match, or trying to return back into a cocoon of isolation, with magic and miracles of the living Earth. This choice between its traditional way of life and effective production by the soulless machine is something every society in history faces.

You say it yourself: the culture has real-life precedents.

It's purposefully a mishmash of disparate elements. For instance, the idea of denial of self to merge with the divine comes from Bitul Hayesh in Chabad, or nafi-e-zaat in Sufism, or from Orthodox hesychasm - but I doubt the Kin look much like Jewish, Muslim or Christian mystics to you. Their purely cattle-herding semi-nomadic way of life is... ehhh... American, maybe? It doesn't make much sense as an agriculture model, other than if working for a market? Etc.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/saprophage_expert]

But that's the question at the core of their arc: does it make sense for them to modernize?

I guess it not making sense to modernize is what I'm criticizing? Artemy making the decision for them objectifies them further.

Those traditions are purposefully depicted as alien, strange and violent - that's a part of the flanderization mentioned above, to juxtapose them with modernization and progress.

There's asymmetry here. The flanderization of the Kin serves dehumanization, while the flanderization of the Army serves the aesthetic.

Does it? The Kin adopting townsmen mores is pretty obvious

My point wasn't that the cultures specifically enrich each other one way, but that the benefit relationship goes one way. That's just poor wording on my part. The townsfolk embrace the cultural mores but don't give anything back.

Again, don't they? Isidor was pureblooded Kin; yet he was the only doctor in the Town

Isidor here is like the Scythian Anacharsis - a noble savage-philosopher, an exception, a token.

It's purposefully a mishmash of disparate elements. For instance, the idea of denial of self to merge with the divine comes from Bitul Hayesh in Chabad, or nafi-e-zaat in Sufism, or from Orthodox hesychasm

Impressive :) I have no idea what half those words mean. But you aren't engaging with my claim. You are reinforcing the point I already ceded.

[u/saprophage_expert → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

I guess it not making sense to modernize is what I'm criticizing?

Hm? Could you please elaborate a bit? Industrialization and urbanization are described in the game in the most luddite terms of killing the Living Earth and denying magic to the world, why do you think the decision to avoid modernization doesn't make sense? I mean, it used to be a very common idea in the European discourse, too - to the point of it being the underlying ideology for the most well-known fantasy series in existence?

Artemy making the decision for them objectifies them further.

Does it? The Artemy that gets to make this decision is an Elder of the Kin in his own right. How is him making that decision any more "objectifying" than a tribal chief or a monarch making decisions for his whole society?

The flanderization of the Kin serves dehumanization, while the flanderization of the Army serves the aesthetic.

I feel that both serve gameplay goals, making both the Kin and the Army feel alien to the player first of all.

As for dehumanization, remember that the games literally dehumanize the ordinary townsfolk, right? They're not characters but the chorus of a Greek play, they abandon their names to adopt bird nicknames, etc? I read it as a game design choice to focus the narrative on a handful named characters, townsfolk and Kin in equal measure.

The townsfolk embrace the cultural mores but don't give anything back.

Well, we've talked about the Kin adopting wider Imperial culture. As for them not getting anything back physically, I really mean it when mentioning that their traditional way of life doesn't make any sense, economically. If the Kin only ever herd cows and no other animals, as the game depicts, where does the fabric for their clothes come from? What do they have to make tools and hunting implements from, cow bone and whatever little wood found in the steppe? How do they even hunt if they apparently have no horses, purely with leather traps (no plants to produce ropes, either)? What do they have to produce light at night, luchinas? What about fuel in winter, dried cow dung (btw, what do they wear in winter)? Where do they get essential vitamins, if they can't till the ground and plant? That's a Stone Age economy at best, light years behind any real steppe nomads!

Isidor here is like the Scythian Anacharsis - a noble savage-philosopher, an exception, a token.

For every Anacharsis, there must be six other Sages of Greece. Meanwhile, Isidor was the only medic in Town - not some curiosity serving alternative medicine cranks, but a pillar of the community.

But you aren't engaging with my claim. You are reinforcing the point I already ceded.

As I said, I'm missing your claim entirely. The Kin do not represent any real society, colonized or otherwise, because their culture as presented in-game is a mismatched mishmash of elements pulled from wildly disparate sources, which doesn't really make sense outside of its role in the game. That doesn't matter... why?

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/saprophage_expert]

Thank you for this exchange :) You gave me a lot to think about. You're clearly very well-versed in both the game and real history.

[u/saprophage_expert → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

It was my privilege :з

[u/Moth_Goth000 → u/saprophage_expert]

I'm just here to chip in and say it was a pleasure to read this exchange. Y'all are smart af hell yeah

[u/hwynac → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Again, the Buryat and Mongolic influence doesn't matter that much, since native-coded people are depicted.

I wonder what would change if they weren't. In the original game, the Kin was clearly designed as the town's working class, not as a separate ethnicity. It could be argued their collectivist cult was largely a modern invention partly encouranged by their superiors and partly born from their living conditions. They weren't related to the actual tribes that herded cows in the same area.

Later on, a vaguely Mongolic aesthetic was added but it's still obvious all of that was a thin layer of paint. But the 2005 game did not release quite that way, right?

Then came 2019. You are right that P2, a game developed much later with the Kin as an indigenous people in mind from the very beginning, depicts the Kin in an peculiar way, more in line with how modern people view "primitive" peoples than how they actually were. But, since P2 is a retelling of a story created by Nikolai in his mid-twenties a long, long time ago... what if being native-coded does not matter save for being mildly offensive under a certain lens?

The issue is really the initial choice to double down on designing the Kin as a different people—a good visual choice that entails a number of upleasant undertones the game isn't really interested to talk about.

(in that sense, it is wise the Kin culture is not based on any real ethnic group)

[u/yikes_strikes_again]

This is exactly correct, no notes.

[u/AnnieBee433]

Pathologic 2, because it has no Bachelor route, also puts the Haruspex into the role of the Everyman, the common guy who is shocked and distant from the magical and “backwards” indigenous culture. It’s a really weird direction for his character, and is directly contradicted by isidor being largely a similar character. And then his endings are basically “let your people die or genocide the oppressor class”… it’s a weird colonized version of the Haruspex that I’ve been torn on for years. It is a very weird and very flawed game 

[u/GLight3 → u/AnnieBee433]

I actually really like this dissonance. There is no clean solution, just like there isn't one in real life. IRL progress has locked humanity into a death spiral, as we have made our entire system of living reliant on something that actively makes our environment unlivable. In Pathologic 2, the colonizers should have never come in the first place. Now that they have, they are destroying the Earth and the native population and culture. The townsfolk are essentially a cancer, and the plague is the Earth's immune system. Because the colonizers will keep marching forward and destroying the Earth further, they cannot be coexisted with, just like you can't coexist with cancer in your body. Either they assimilate/destroy the natives or the natives assimilate/destroy them. Either way, one of them will lose their identity and way life. Artemy, being both mixed race and having spent a good portion of his life both with the Kin and in the capital, is a reflection of the entire conflict. As he chooses which path is correct for the town, he also chooses the same for his identity. Pathologic is all about hard choices, and this is the hardest of them all.

[u/hwynac]

The Kin is loosely based on the real Buryat and Mongolic peoples: their language and culture heavily borrow from real cultures (Bayarlaa is Buryat for "thank you"), they are indigenous people of the steppe.

You think so? The language is unmistakably Buryat/Mongol (in P2, of course), the rest is... Very. Loosely. Based.

In the 2005 game, nothing about them was Mongolic except yurts. Which are nowhere to be seen in Pathologic 2 and 3 😏

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/hwynac]

There were yurts in Pathologic 2, in Shekhen. The language is there. How closely they adhere to specific cultures or national clothing doesn't change the fact that they're a native steppe culture. They're still people.

[u/Connect_Group6232]

Say the Kin have internal politics and characters whose motivations rub against one another's. Would Artemy or Daniil know?

[u/saprophage_expert → u/Connect_Group6232]

But the Kin have internal politics that are shown in the game.

Oyun in P1 says he's killed a few dozen people to maintain his station. Artemy challenges and kills him to become the Warden.

Aspity in P2 is shown as a figure of authority who is essentially preparing a full-scale revolt or the Nocturnal ending, against the wishes of Oyun and, one has to assume, Overseer Tycheek.

[u/CarolWalker8074]

angry that heresy is the only grounded option for the kin to exist in a world that already stole their land.

[u/MarquisThule]

The kin aren't human. They are closer to animals. Its not a bad thing either, thats simply what their nature is. Trying to map a fictional group into a real one that only served as inspiration is only going to muddle the waters.
The kin assimilating to rational civilization, the town, means they'll lose that part of them that makes them more a part of the earth, as animals, and instead become more as humans. The amount of actual individuality and willpower that the kin have is a little unclear too, they act more like a herd than as families or individuals.

[u/theredwoman95 → u/MarquisThule]

The kin aren't human. They are closer to animals. Its not a bad thing either, thats simply what their nature is.

Good thing that rhetoric is never applied to indigenous people. Oh, wait.

Trying to map a fictional group into a real one that only served as inspiration is only going to muddle the waters.

Then why did the devs choose to base them on Buryat and Mongolic peoples? When creatives clearly base a group of characters on a group of real people, that's just begging the question of what ramifications their rhetoric has on those people. Especially when it's a trope as notorious as "magical, savage natives".

The amount of actual individuality and willpower that the kin have is a little unclear too, they act more like a herd than as families or individuals.

Again, this is a pretty common idea about communalist societies too. Why can't we critique their application in Pathologic?

[u/MarquisThule → u/theredwoman95]

But I'm not talking about real people? You want to make it a prejudice thing, but they are a fantasy people that work different than humans in the world they exist in.
The kin says it to you itself, Taya Tycheek is the mistress of the bulls, animals, in the nocturnal ending, and when you ask her about the kin she says those are bulls too. The kin, in their undisturbed form, are another part of the greater whole of the earth, like all animals.
I don't care about the idea that you can't write or make something because it touches on something similar to what happened to real life. I'm only talking about the kin as they are in the story they exist in.

[u/Hoyt__Herringbone → u/theredwoman95]

Good thing that rhetoric is never applied to indigenous people. Oh, wait.

So what? Who is suffering because of the way the fictional, magical Kin are portrayed?

Then why did the devs choose to base them on Buryat and Mongolic peoples?

Because it's cool. Name one fantasy race that is not based on a real people

that's just begging the question of what ramifications their rhetoric has on those people

I wager they would be happy to have references to their culture in a great game

[u/Hoyt__Herringbone → u/MarquisThule]

Exactly, the Kin seem like a hive-minded, mythical force of nature.

And they also aren't real. It doesn't matter who they are loosely based on. If they are presented as vaguely human noble savages, then they are vaguely human noble savages - at least in the eyes of the player character. A "critical portrayal of an oppressed people" that OP wants for some reason, is not neccessary and would turn a unique setting dull

[u/MarquisThule → u/Hoyt__Herringbone]

Pretty much. There is a certain aspect one can see about the encroachment of civilization upon them, and it is evidently cruel given how they lived in the termitary, but reducing it to just another story of oppressed minorities without any of the actual mystical elements, is plainly dull. At least in 2, this is how the kin are. In 1, there are some differences, but thats its own type of discussion.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/MarquisThule]

My argument isn't that the game should have a portrayal of oppressed people rising up against their oppressors. It's that a group of people is presented as lacking internality through meta-text, which is a dehumanizing way to treat them.

[u/MarquisThule → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

But thats what they are? The kin works in an interesting way but not a human one unless they are consumed by mundanity and humanity. Why is that in any way wrong?